Santa Rita

About Santa Rita:

Santa Rita district covers 51 square kilometres just north of Carmona, the canton seat, and is home to about 1,800 people. The main village sits at 52 metres above sea level beside the Route 21 junction everyone calls the cruce de Santa Rita, although people coming up from Jicaral are just as likely to call it the cruce de Carmona. The Nicoya–Jicaral and San José–Jicaral buses stop there. Around the village the district takes in Santa Rita Norte, La Roxana, Cacao, Chumico, Morote, Guastomatal, Tacanis, Guaria and Angostura, plus parts of Uvita and Yerbabuena. Carmona has the town hall and the CCSS clinic; for the hospital you go on to Nicoya.

This is one of the oldest settlements in the canton. The story goes that around 1855 José Hernández and Rut Vargas came over from Pueblo Viejo de Nicoya with their twelve children and four cows and cleared the forest where the village now stands, half a century before the families who founded Carmona arrived. Farming has carried the place ever since. Melones del Sol, which began exporting melons and watermelons to Europe in 1998, works 150 hectares and employs many people from the village; beyond that it is cattle, small farms and the shops, bars and sodas along the main road. Santa Rita has its own primary school, the Escuela Guillermo Alvarado Hernández, there are smaller schools at Cacao, La Roxana and Tacanis, and the development association puts on the fiestas populares in the dry season.

The land splits in two. Around the village and in Santa Rita Norte the ground is flat, the soil is good cropland and the farm tracks are easy, which is why the melons and the priciest lots are here. Away from the valley floor it rises into hills such as Cerro Santa Rita, Cerro Tacanis and Cerro Coyolar, and the pasture at Tacanis and Guaria runs on slopes of thirty per cent and steeper. The Río Nandayure and the Río Morote drain the district, with a tangle of quebradas in between. In the rainy season that water decides things: in November 2023 the Nandayure broke its banks and flooded homes in Santa Rita and La Roxana.

Most people here were born here, and most buyers come from the peninsula itself: families who want a lot within reach of Carmona’s services, and farmers adding pasture. Buyers from further afield usually look at the hill fincas with gulf views, or at a house with a hectare or two of land around it. Two public works matter for anyone building. The municipality has been paving the road between Santa Rita and Cacao, and in February 2026 it began drilling a new 80-metre well for the municipal aqueduct that supplies Santa Rita and Carmona. The first brings the outlying villages closer; the second is meant to keep the taps running as the population grows.

Land and Lots in Santa Rita:

Village lots run from a few hundred square metres to around a thousand, many of them flat and facing the road, and the better ones are sold with title in order and a water availability letter already issued. Some come with teak already growing and are reached by a private easement rather than a public street. You pay the most per square metre for small lots on the flat at Santa Rita Norte and along the main road; hill land toward Tacanis and Guaria costs a fraction of that per metre, because the slope and the access limit what you can build. When you compare lots for sale in Santa Rita de Nandayure, ask whether the way in is a public street or a servidumbre, and make sure the cadastral plan shows it.

Farms and Fincas in Santa Rita:

The district’s acreage is pasture, teak and hill country. On the flat you find small pasture fincas of two hectares or so with long frontage on a public road. In the hills, parcels of around a hundred hectares come up with views across the gulf. If you are looking at farms for sale in Santa Rita, walk the boundaries after a few days of rain if you can, and find out where the river and spring protection strips fall before you count usable hectares.

Houses in Santa Rita:

In the village, homes are family houses on modest lots near the church, the school and the bus stop at the junction, a short drive from everything in Carmona. Out of the village the plots get bigger: a two-bedroom house on a third of a hectare, or a home sitting on nearly a hectare and a half of land. That extra ground is the reason people choose a house for sale in Santa Rita over one in town. If the property is anywhere near the Nandayure, look at the floor height and the way the yard drains before you look at the kitchen.

FAQ:

• Which Santa Rita is this?

  Santa Rita district in Nandayure canton, Guanacaste, postal code 50902. Costa Rica has other places with the same name, including a Santa Rita district in Río Cuarto, Alajuela, so check that the cadastral plan and the registry entry say Nandayure.

• How far is Santa Rita from Carmona and Nicoya?

  Carmona is just to the south, close enough that the two share a water supply. Nicoya lies to the north-west along Route 21, and that is where you go for the hospital and the larger shops. The cruce de Santa Rita on Route 21 is the stop for buses toward Nicoya, Jicaral and San José.

• Does Santa Rita flood?

  Low ground near the rivers can. In November 2023 the Río Nandayure overflowed and put water into houses in Santa Rita, La Roxana and Puerto San Pablo. Ask the Municipalidad de Nandayure whether a lot lies in a flood-prone area, talk to the neighbours about where the water reached, and raise the floor if you build near the river.

• What catches buyers out on flat pasture land here?

  Two things. Under the Forestry Law, land along rivers and quebradas carries a protection strip of fifteen metres on each side in rural areas, fifty metres where the ground is steep, and a hundred-metre radius around permanent springs, so a finca crossed by streams has fewer buildable hectares than its size suggests. And a public road drawn on the plan can turn out to be an unmaintained gravel track you cannot drive. Pull the property from the Registro Nacional (Registro Inmobiliario), match the plan to what is on the ground, and get the land-use certificate from the municipality before you pay a deposit.

• Who supplies water in Santa Rita?

  The village is on the municipal aqueduct it shares with Carmona, so the water availability letter you need for a building permit comes from the Municipalidad de Nandayure. A new deep well started in February 2026 is meant to give that system more capacity. For lots in the outlying villages, confirm who runs the water before you assume a connection.